The Morning Risk Report – Wall Street Journal – Samsung Electronics Co.’s admission it has child labor within its supplier network and the U.S. State Department’s recent demotions of Thailand, Malaysia and Venezuela to lowest-tier status for child and forced labor problems are serving as a wake-up call to multinational companies about cleaning up their own supply chains. Failing to weed out problems in their systems could lead to their bad behavior becoming front-page news, says the head of one organization fighting to eliminate child labor. “The hide-your-head-in-the-sand days are over,” said Diane Mull, executive director of the International Initiative on Exploitative Child Labor. Click here to read more…

The FBI has rescued 168 children as a result of a coast-to-coast crackdown on sex traffickers, officials said Monday (June 23, 2014). Officials reported that the youngest was 11 years old and some of the children have never been reported missing. The week-long operation, called “Cross County VIII,” took place in 106 cities across the U.S. and resulted in the arrest of 281 pimps who recruited minors off street corners and online. Officials said both the victims and their captors were generally American citizens.

Members of Idaho’s congressional delegation have proposed a bill that would lower the minimum age for children of logging company owners to work with a parent in the industry.

The bill proposed would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to lower the minimum mechanized logging employment age for children of logging company owners from 18 to 16. Parental supervision would be required for the 16 and 17-year old workers.

Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both R-Idaho, introduced the bill in the Senate, and Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, submitted a House companion bill. Apparently, no opposition to the bill has been expressed but Crapo expects concerns may surface during the vetting of the bill. The bill is called the Youth Careers in Logging Act, which would amend the FLSA to lower the minimum mechanized logging employment age for children.

Proponents of the bill say that while logging is dangerous, they believe the risks for the youth would be outweighed by their learning a strong work ethic. The average age of an American logger is 58. It is thought that the bill could help bring new blood to the workforce.

Serena Carlson, a consultant for the Idaho Forest Product Commission, believes the bill would add consistency to labor laws, which already allow 16-year-old children to work on farms and operate heavy equipment.

“Logging and agriculture are very similar. It doesn’t make sense that there would be an exception for agriculture but no logging,” said Carlson.

“It is extremely troubling that there is a continued attempt to erode child labor protective laws in US,” says Diane Mull, executive director of the International Initiative to End Child Labor. While the rest of the world is strengthening their laws and protections for children, in the US we disregard decades of history and research, not to mention the countless numbers of recorded deaths, which has proven that children must be protected from hazardous labor and sometimes their parents,” Mull says.

“Agriculture, of which forestry is a part, is consistently one of the top three most dangerous industries, due to the numbers of accidents and deaths on the job that happen each year. Agriculture, especially logging operations, is no location where a child should be found,” says Mull.

Richmond, VA (May 14, 2014) An international rights group is pushing the federal government and the tobacco industry to take further steps to protect children working on U.S. tobacco farms.

A report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch claims that children as young as 7 are sometimes working long hours in fields harvesting nicotine- and pesticide-laced tobacco leaves under sometimes hazardous conditions. Most of what the group documented is legal, but it wants cigarette makers to push for safety on farms from which they buy tobacco. Click here to read more…

The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has recently decided to withdraw its investment in the Indian company Zuari Agro Chemicals (‘Zuari’) because of the contribution of the company to the worst forms of child labor. This decision was taken based on a recommendation from the Council on Ethics of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG). On the average, 20% to 30% of the workers at the farms supplying seeds to Zuari are children under 15 years. A rough estimate suggests that about 3,000 to 4,000 children are involved in the company’s seed production: 20% of them younger than 10 years of age. The decision of the Norwegian Ministry of Finance has been taken after various unsuccessful efforts to get a credible response from Zuari on how they are tackling child labor in their supply chain…Click here to read more…

If you are a young person, teacher, school, youth or community group or NGO working with children and/or youth and need a small amount of funds to support a project idea to help end child labor, we want to hear your ideas. In collaboration with the Emily Sandall Foundation, the International Initiative to End Child Labor (IIECL) will be awarding ten Emily grants in the fall of 2013. Applications are due by midnight November 3, 2013. Proposed projects should address the following: Click here to read more…

About

The International Initiative on Exploitative Child Labor (IIECL), also commonly known as the International Initiative to End Child Labor, is a US-based, not-for-profit [US IRS approved 501 (c) (3)] organization, incorporated in 1999.
We conduct and/or provides education, training, technical assistance, capacity building, research, social accountability auditing, resources, and evaluation services to public and private institutions and agencies, non-governmental organizations,
and international programmatic institutions that seek to eliminate the worst forms of child labor in the United States and around the world.